Over the last few months, I had a chance to hear and read about institutional struggles of museums – the problems of fundraising to marketing, and the need to educate and familiarize newcomers to museums were all parts of it. And of all dangers that art institutions face today, the tension between neoliberal marketization versus genuine fervor to retain elite and pure art seems to be the greatest threat. That is, as Claire Bishop states, the museums tend to follow the idea that bigger is better and better is richer, by diminishing their concerns for a collection, a history, a position, or a mission and promoting only the image of the new, the cool, the photogenic, and the economically successful. In other worlds, museums are increasingly transforming themselves to meet the neoliberal market expectations. For instance, “starchitecture” has become the big component of a successful museums, and museum’s looks and functions rather than its content have increasingly become its focus. The question is: what should the museums do in order to survive the age of neoliberal marketization? In answering this very difficult and probably unanswerable question, I define the most fundamental problem of art institutions as the lack of public interest and engagement with museums. Furthermore, understanding this lack of interest in museums as the core problem, I provide two directions that museums should strive toward: public exposure to art and politicization of art aimed to spark the public’s connection to art. In addition, I argue that these two directions should not be pursued within the actual museum itself.

First, the neoliberal marketization of museums poses grave threats to current day art institutions. As Matti Bunzl states in his book In Search of a Lost Avant-Garde, today’s museums, especially contemporary art museums, face the imperative for growth. Therefore, marketing, merchandising, and branding have increasingly become more important, to get more people to museum and to encourage commercial funding. In other words, museums with only contents are increasingly becoming marginalized by the public and thus investors. When examining such tensions, I see the core problem as people’s general disinterest in art, and therefore, disinterest toward museums (unless they are commercialized by market forces). Because museums cannot be sustained by culture-vultures and because the largest proportion of its visitors are casual go-ers for cultural activities, museums need to appeal to general people, who are likely to have been intimidated by museums and elite art. As museums fail to achieve commercial success and to bring in more people, they get incorporated into the neoliberal market; museums transform and evolve to survive. Therefore, museums need to promote familiarity between art and people. Without people’s genuine interest in art, museums would be marketized and commercialized, for they would have no support by the public in retaining arts and spaces unadulterated by commercialization. It is the evolution of the public’s taste that museums should strive to bring, to ensure long-term legitimacy of art museums. Before providing two directions that museums should strive toward, I propose that museums should make efforts to engage the public outside the institution itself in order to survive and protect its integrity from market forces.

Museum’s efforts to familiarize the public with art should be very limited within actual space for the institution itself. While listening to curators and editors from institutions in Chicago and Evanston, I realized that the value of museums does not allow bold steps toward connecting art-newbies with uncommercialized art and art museums – museum itself lives to achieve dialectical goals: to retain its purity and exclusivity to some extent while getting more people to visit the museum. With the dialectics of publicity and privacy and of exclusivity and inclusivity, museums are too careful in actively sparking people’s fundamental interest in art. In other words, they are too concerned about their status and this vigilance can never compete with bold, formidable, all-out marketization forces that uses money as the dynamo. Therefore, I suggest that further, more audacious attempts to familiarize people with art should be done outside the museums. I am not saying that art institutions should not be in charge; in fact, I want established experts (rather than art “strategists” for market) to lead the direction toward familiarizing the public. I am saying that the space for museums should not be violated in its efforts to promote public engagement. Developing museum spaces themselves are ineffective and limited; people would still be intimidated by the word “museum” and museums themselves would not take adequate steps to fully engage with the public in retaining elitism and exclusivity to a certain extent.

Given the above circumstances, museums should strive to promote public exposure and the politicization of diverse art forms to make them connect with the public consciousness. The public exposure is the fundamental step in familiarizing the public with art museums. By exposing the public to artworks in various places, we provide people with various sensibilities. This exposure strategy does not pressure the public to actually know and connect to arts themselves; but rather, it simply familiarizes the public’s eyes with works of arts. Such exposure may not even be noticed by the public when they encounter it for the first time; however, over time, it may at least grasp their attention as an artwork. I remember learning about Des gleneuses by Jean-François Millet and The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh at a public bathroom during my middle school years. I familiarized myself with these paintings on the bathroom walls over time (or they familiarized themselves to me), and I actually delved further into these pieces purely out of curiosity; I ended up learning about who Gogh and Millet were, and that was my first intentional interaction with art world. As such, people need to be first exposed to art to taste it, especially if they are not art lovers to begin with. It does not matter whether the exposure takes place in bathrooms or in public lounges; the key is the exposure itself. Therefore, museums themselves need to make efforts to surround people’s everyday lives with arts. Without people’s genuine interest in art reinforced by their exposure, museums would continue to be the object of “starchitecture” that would strive to bring more people through market means. Exposure is analytical to a person’s experimentation with food. If one sees a strangely described food (with somewhat intimidating name) on the menu, one is likely to reject it; however, if the food is presented in front of one, with more vivid visuals and unexpectedly pleasant smells, one may try a bite. Experience with art is no different.

The second direction the museums should strive toward is the presentation of diverse forms of art, politicized to interest the public. Whereas the first point about exposure concerns art’s penetration of the public’s everyday life spaces, the second point calls for the establishment of an actual ‘space’ where the public can interact with diverse forms of art. The objective of this space is to provide more in-depth engagement between art and the public. Though the concrete structure and components of such spaces should require further contemplation, these spaces should strive to promote the public’s understanding of art beyond the work itself; these spaces politicize and place art in context, conveying to the audience that art is beyond just aesthetics. The key here is the diversity of arts, preferably gathered under themes that are familiar to general audiences. In this space, the public engages with multiple forms of art arranged under familiar themes and contexts, and learns how art can be politicized to connect to our lives. One crucial thing to note is that this space should not pursue the goal of being ‘exclusive.’ Rather, it should establish the attraction for general people; it can take the forms of cafe, restaurant, or even a hipster bar. It should be more open to the components of popular culture and popular art, and should work as the middle ground between public attraction and art institution. In other words, it needs to be entertaining or ‘hip’ enough to attract people, and be open to any components of popular, commercial culture. Popular appeals may suck the public in, but within the space, they will experience the collection of artworks politicized and historicized to connect to public interests or concerns. Popular culture gains momentum because it connects to general people; in a similar way, there should be a space in which artworks connect to the public. As such, museums and art institutions need to push for public exposure to arts and for politicization of diverse artwork that can relate to the public consciousness.

I understand these two visions would have multiple problems if these were to be actually implemented by art institutions. For instance, organizing members and financial support for these projects would probably lead to new controversies. However, these are the directions that art institutions need to take for them to survive without excessive marketization. If the public continues to disengage itself with museums and if the younger generations constantly expose themselves only to certain popular culture encompassed by neoliberal tendencies, the future for art institutions would be dreary. Therefore, art institutions should strive to capture the interest of the public, and to expose them to previously unseen sensibilities; the methods do not matter as much as the attitude of art institutions.

Overall, taste (sensibility) and knowledge can only be communicated if audiences are ready to connect themselves to art. Art institutions are trying hard to get people to come to museums; it has become one of the most important goals for museums and to achieve this, museums continue to rely on market forces and merchandising. This tendency is quite dangerous for two main reasons: 1. People will continue to lose interest in art 2. Museum itself would become the part of market and lose its value as the protector of genuine, pure art. Regarding the first reason, people attracted through the market means are not ready to appreciate art that the museum wants them to appreciate; they may like the museum for its commercial entertainment but may never fully appreciate art itself. This reason connects to the second reason as well. With decreasing number of art-appreciating audiences, museums would continue to rely on market modes to attract people, and would eventually become the part of market itself. This cycle should be broken from the basis. Popular culture is often reactionary to politics, and therefore by its nature it has stronger connection to the general people. It is also bold because it does not have to worry about protecting the pure form of popular art unlike art institutions. To protect ‘pure’ art from these forces, art institutions need to show new tastes to the public, without calling them to museum where they might get “intimidated” by works. Instead, museums should construct an alternate ego, through a totally separate space and set of goals, focused to promote people’s interest in the genuine taste of art.

Art institutions should strive to promote the public exposure and connection to art. In addition, these projects should be done outside the actual museum itself, for most museums are concerned with striking the balance between exclusivity and inclusivity. They will continue to lose their popularity if they are satisfied with handing out brochures to whomever that enters the museum, which is the status quo. On the other hand, they will continue to lose their identity if they decide to expand and entangle itself with the market politics. The genuine sustainability of museums is best established when they have the natural support of the people who can appreciate art; but without demands, supplies will be pushed aside. Therefore, it is time for art institutions to be bold and reach out to create demands for unadulterated art.